


What is untrue, dies

by Ruta



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Brainwashed Bellamy Blake, F/M, Love Confessions, POV Second Person, Season/Series 07 Speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-14
Updated: 2020-06-14
Packaged: 2021-03-03 18:54:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24720388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ruta/pseuds/Ruta
Summary: "I'm not yours to save," you hear him say in the silence that surrounds you.You are not mine,you would like to tell him. It would be the right thing to say. This would not make it true."I've never been."You turn your head and look him straight in the eye. "This does not mean that I will stop trying. I will save you if it’s the last thing I ever do. You don't remember it, but I can be very convincing." Smiling hurts, but you do it anyway. He frowns and for a moment is so like the real himself that you would like to kiss him.[Void Bellamy. Once she arrived to Bardo, Clarke discovers that Bellamy only remembers her as Wanheda.]
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin
Comments: 4
Kudos: 61





	What is untrue, dies

You are Clarke Griffin and you are used to grieve the loss of someone you love, each of which has different connotations.

Sometimes it's the overwhelming silence of a metal cage, of your cell in the Skybox. Sometimes it's a stab in the chest, like your mercy killing Finn. Sometimes a stab in the throat, like the ones that severed the life of Wells and Atom. Sometimes it's torn flesh and shattered mind and a box-shaped coffin that sits in the palm of your hand. Sometimes it's black rain. Sometimes it's the agony of radiations. Sometimes it’s the heartbreak of watching a rocket leave without you from the top of a satellite tower.

Sometimes it's a bear trap snapped and closed around your ankle. Or the electric jolt of a shock collar. Or the person you've called every day for six years who turns his back on you and walks away after practically telling you he's sacrificing your family to save his.

It’s watching two suns rise on a new planet while with his last will Monty wishes you to find your redemption after having reduced the old one to ashes.

It’s the horror of finding yourself immobilized, but alert and conscious, while they inform you that you are going to die, that in this way you will finally know peace and all you can think of besides the anger and the dreadful terror that are devouring your heart, it’s regret for the words you never said and the woman you won't see your daughter become.

And then there are other times. Fortunately, not many. When the pain that plagues you is not like a tide or an earthquake or a fucking apocalypse. It is all these things together. Like when you lost your father. Or when you loosened Simone's grip and saw your mother's body float like your father's once did. Or when you found out that Bellamy's memories were erased and distorted, that he is alive, but you lost him in the worst possible way.

You are Clarke Griffin and your battle is over. You will never see your daughter again. Your friends are prisoners and the man you have loved since you were eighteen remember you only as Wanheda.

After you pointed a gun at the Shepherd and declared that they will pay for what they have done and that they can go to hell, all of them and their damned war, they have locked you up in this room. They probably hope that isolation will make you more malleable or open to dialogue.

The walls and floor are immaculate white, looking at them too long gives you a headache. Another room like this comes to mind. Your eyes are looking for a painting that you know you won't find. By now you have lost track of time. It could be hours or days. It may not have been more than a minute.

The door opens and the air in the room seems to disappear suddenly. Your chest compresses and you can't breathe. Your body is heavy. You feel like you're floating in the void of infinite space, watching the universe implode in your head and the universe is looking back at you with the eyes of a god whose duality you have long decided not to bet on. Whether it exists or not, you have decided that that god is like men. A part that loves and builds, that is life and Venus. A part that hates and destroys, that is war and Mars.

In the eyes of the man who enters you find the last. You would like to take your head in your hands, scream until you have no more breath in your lungs against this latest injustice. Instead, you don't blink. You don't even cry.

The man who kneels in front of you is not Bellamy. He wears his face like a mask, he smells like him, but the expression with which he looks at you is wrong and so is the voice with which he speaks to you. Is this how he felt when Josephine was inside your body? Did he experience this macerating doubt, this impotence, this desperation?

He hands you the tray with the food and you would like to throw it away. You tighten your arms a little tighter around your torso. If you let go, you are afraid of falling apart and then who would mend you together? Once he would have done it.

You have never been so alone, not even when he was only a mirage among the stars.

"Aren't you going to eat today either?"

You don't answer him. You don't want to watch him, but you can't help it. You know it's not him, but a part of you finds the idea unacceptable, the truth is aberrant. You still hope that he will look at you and remembers who you are, what you are _together_.

"The possession of reason distinguishes man from animals," he points out and the kindness in his eyes is what your Bellamy would have reserved to a stranger. It is the compassion you would give to a dying man or an injured animal. It’s impersonal and perfectly encloses what the real Bellamy, yours, has never been with you. It’s cold and apathetic. Even in your worst moments, his fury was not a snowstorm, but lightning and magma.

It's not him, and yet-

"Persuade with the force of reason?" Your voice has a rasping sound, like ice breaking. You lick your lips. "It's not like us."

You expect a biting response, a crack in his composure. He does not react the way you had hoped. He doesn't frown, he doesn't twist his mouth in the scowl you know so well. No contrast or animosity shines through on his shaved face. He is a different man, this new version of Bellamy. He is someone you don't know and can't understand. Like a tabula rasa.

You watch him as he stands up in his white robes and places the tray on the table. You don't want to see him leave, even if it's what you've wanted since he came in. You place your head against your knees and think about how the world has turned upside down.

When you hear him sit next to you again, you bite your cheek strong enough to taste blood on your tongue.

You know they are watching you. There are cameras. They are hidden and you still haven't been able to find them, but you know there are. You are laboratory rats. Is this the treatment they’re reserving to the others? Their memories have already been taken, their identities and everything that makes them themselves, traumas and formative experiences and impossible choices, unduly erased and stolen? We are more than just what we have done. Our memories are the testimony of the various versions of us. Without our past, what remains of us, of our stories?

"I'm not yours to save," you hear him say in the silence that surrounds you.

 _You are not mine_ , you would like to tell him. It would be the right thing to say. This would not make it true.

"I've never been."

You turn your head and look him straight in the eye. "This does not mean that I will stop trying. I will save you if it’s the last thing I ever do. You don't remember it, but I can be very convincing." Smiling hurts, but you do it anyway. He frowns and for a moment is so like the real himself that you would like to kiss him.

The desire disappears the moment you see him get up, take out the gun and point it at you. You recognize it immediately and the moment you do, you understand that this is the end. In one way or another, this is your last fight.

He must read the absence of surprise or fear on your face because he contracts the jaw and the confusion in his eyes is tinted by a spark of real emotion.

You get up. Take a step forward.

He does not back away, does not lower his arm even when you close your hand around the barrel of the gun and press it against your chest.

"I know you won't. You can't. No matter how low we have fallen or how many circles of hell have a place with our name marked on it, there is something we will never be able to do, and it is this. You won’t kill me. You won't do it for the same reason I couldn't shoot you even when it came to choose between your life and that of hundreds of our people in the bunker."

He nods. You doubt it is because you triggered his dormant memory and he suddenly remembered the episode you evoked, but rather because what you just said is the last piece of the puzzle he was working on.

"You love me," he says. It is not a question, but a simple statement. You wish it had a less bitter taste. You realize that thought must have haunted him since you arrived to Bardo.

"Maybe," you say. "I won't tell you that. Not now. You wouldn't know if it's real or if I'm lying to save my life."

His forehead has still that small frown. His hand does not tremble, but something at the bottom of his eyes does. They are like shadows cast on the wall of a cave. You stare at the incandescent anger that deforms his face. Once you would have been able to recognize the reason behind it, the flicker of a muscle in his cheek. You are too reckless. You care too little about your life. But why should you care? He has always been there to fret about you, to watch your back.

"You assume too much. What makes you believe that even if you said it, it would change something? I may not love you."

You know what you need to do. You loosen your grip around the gun and watch the way his trained eyes turn away from yours for a split second.

"You saved my life so many times," you whisper. "Time to return the favour."

With a swift movement, you hit him on the wrist and take the gun from him. Then point it at yourself.

You don't know if you are imagining the panic-stricken way, he is looking at you or the fear in his voice when he asks, "What are you doing?"

"What I have to. I bear it, so you don't have to."

You take aim. You are not a doctor like your mother, but you know how the human body works. You know where to hit to get the most damage possible and how to avoid a fatal injury.

You are Clarke Griffin and that's not how you die.

You shoot. Pain is a lighting that strikes and blinds you for a moment. You fall to your knees with a cry. He is next to you in a second, already applying pressure to the wound. You look at him and realize immediately. You know it's him. Bellamy has come back to you.

"Clarke." Your name has the taste of tears and the ghosts that you now glimpse in his haunted eyes. "Why did you do that?"

You would like to reassure him. You know it’s a matter of time before they get here. The pain in the side is unbearable, it makes every thought a Herculean task, but breathing becomes easier when you focus on Bellamy. "Don't be angry. I did what you would have done."

The gun is loaded. You put it in his hand, and you are proud of him when he grits his teeth and pushes back the words that he surely would like to throw at you. It was a risky move. You know it. You do not care. You would do it again.

He nods slowly. He is covering you from a precise angle of the room.

You exchange a look. "Tell me what to do."

Time is not your ally. It never is. You should tell him to find Raven and the others. Ask him about Octavia. Instead all you can say is, "Don't leave me."

His eyes are tear-filled and resolved, and he squeezes your fingers so hard it hurts. You both have bloody hands. He is looking at you like he has looked at you many other times in the past. Like he doesn't even know if he wants to strangle you or kiss you. You would like to tell him that the feeling is mutual. "Never."

Your eyes sting.

 _Ai hod yu in_ , you think. You are about to say it, but the Disciples walk into the room.

" _Ogeda_ ," you hear him whisper. _Together_.

It does not matter. You are Clarke Griffin and you haven't lost your heart yet.

**Author's Note:**

> After the 7x04, I couldn't help it and I write something with a Void/Brainwashed Bellamy.
> 
> Personally I find that it would be a much more powerful - and painful - choice if we were shown a Bellamy who does not remember Clarke, who has no idea who she is and who at their first meeting this season gives her an empty, non-recognition look.
> 
> Because let's face it, after years of unilateral love for this ship, how much would that destroy us? The moments that we loved so much canceled, lost, unduly subtracted. I don't know about you, but I would be wiped. 
> 
> After the traumatic experience that was the "I love you" sherlolly in the BBC's Sherlock, I became very biased in love confessions in induced or otherwise forced situations. My objection is the same as ever, since the time of the Lamù - Boy Meets Girl film where Ataru thinks that if he said it in that context, that first 'I love you' would be forever counterfeited or stained by doubt, that Lamù could never know if he said it because he really has those feelings or just to save the planet.
> 
> In short, after years of waiting, I hope for something more honest... we deserve it, don't you think?


End file.
